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London is awash with free exhibitions catering to every taste...
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Find the best museum exhibits in th ecapital, plus get detailson all the latest museum events.
Discover more museums and attractions in London
Time Out recommends London's best attractions for visitors
© The Trustees of the British Museum
You need not worry if you're exploring London on a budget as plenty of the city's top museums are free to explore. Head to the British Museum for some free art and culture, the Natural History Museum for amazing artefacts, learn something new at the Science Museum or discover art and design at the V&A all free of charge.
Here's our guide to the best free museums in London and you can find them all on our map below.
Officially the country's most popular tourist attraction, the British Museum opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu House, which then occupied this site. The current building is a neoclassical marvel built in 1847 by Robert Smirke, one of the pioneers of the Greek Revival style. The most high profile addition since then was Lord Foster's popular glass-roofed Great Court, open since 2000 and now claimed to be 'the largest covered public square in Europe'. This £100m landmark surrounds the domed Reading Room (used by the British Library until its move to King's Cross), where Marx, Lenin, Dickens, Darwin, Hardy and Yeats once worked.
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The Grant Museum of animal skeletons, taxidermy specimens and creatures preserved in fluid retains the air of the house of an avid Victorian collector while posing questions about issues in life sciences today. The collection includes remains of many rare and extinct animals, such as a dodo and the skeleton of the zebra-like quagga, which was hunted out of existence in the 1880s. Also fascinating is the Grant Museum's collection of bisected heads, created by Sir Victor Negus, which look quite normal on one side but can be turned round to reveal the brain within. There are items of cultural interest too: a huge elephant skull helps to explain the Cyclops myth - its large central cavity looking very plausible as a monocular eye socket but really the space for an airway.
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Antique guns, tanks, aircraft and artillery are parked in the main hall of this imposing edifice, built in 1814 as a lunatic asylum (the Bethlehem Royal Hospital, aka Bedlam). After the inmates were moved out in 1930, the central block became the war museum, only to be damaged by World War II air raids. Today, the museum traces the history of armed conflict, especially involving Britain and the Commonwealth, from World War I to today.
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Freemasons' Hall, the eye-catchingly bombastic stone building where Long Acre becomes Great Queen Street, is the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England and the principal meeting place for Masonic Lodges in London. It was built between 1927 and 1932 as a memorial to the Freemasons who died in WWI. In addition to the Grand Temple, there is a library and museum, committee rooms and administrative offices. The library and museum houses a collection of Masonic material, accessible to the general public.
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When a museum opening is attended not just by Mayor Boris Johnson, who sometimes seems happy to open anything at all if he's asked nicely enough, but by Sir Michael Caine (born in Rotherhithe) and Barbara Windsor, MBE (Shoreditch), you know it's somewhere special. And the Museum of London is certainly that.
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Designed by George Grey Wornum, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) building is a fine example of 1930s architecture. The Grade II-listed building hosts regular talks and exhibitions. There's also a shop and a café with an outdoor terrace, in addition to one of the finest architectural libraries in the world, which contains around four million items and is open to non-members who bring along photo ID.
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Designed by architect Sir John Soane to house his own collection of paintings and architectural salvage, the museum is a tranquil place full of unexpected treasures, with a wealth of intriguing natural lighting effects best viewed on a bright day. A leading architect of his day, Soane is responsible for the building that housed the Bank of England (only the perimeter remains now). Much of Sir John Soane's Museum's appeal derives from the domestic setting - the Breakfast Room has a much-imitated domed ceiling, inset with convex mirrors, for instance. On the first Tuesday of each month, Sir John Soane's Museum stays opens late and some parts are lit by candlelight. During the holidays, drop-off children's workshops exploring the house take place. Visitors can see the Picture Room rehung according to Soane's original arrangement, featuring works by Canaletto and others. The rehang is part of 'Opening Up The Soane', a three-year project to open up areas and aspects of Soane's collection and improve visitor facilities.
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Built in 1776, this handsome house contains an exceptional collection of 18th-century French furniture, painting and objets d'art, as well as an amazing array of medieval armour and weaponry. It all belonged to Sir Richard Wallace, who, as the illegitimate offspring of the fourth Marquess of Hertford, inherited in 1870 the treasures his father had amassed in the last 30 years of his life.
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'One of the ugliest buildings in the world,' opined a Parliamentary committee on the opening of the new British Library in 1997. But don't judge a book by its cover: the interior is a model of cool, spacious functionality, the collection is unmatched (150 million items and counting), and the reading rooms (open only to cardholders) are so popular that regular users are now complaining that they can't find a seat
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This seventeenth-century building, which used to belong to the daughter of Rudyard Kipling, now houses the Hampstead Museum and a licensed buttery.
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Kenwood House is a fine example of the work of Robert Adam, who remodelled the place between 1764-73 and designed much of the interior. The mansion was originally built in 1616 and remodelled for William Murray, who made the pivotal court ruling in 1772 that made it illegal to own slaves in England. Kenwood House contains the Iveagh Bequest of paintings and eighteenth-century furniture. Paintings include one of Rembrandt's finest self-portraits, Vermeer's 'The Guitar Player' and Gainsborough's 'Countess Howe'. The location is every bit as important - Kenwood House is set in lovely grounds at the top of Hampstead Heath.
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Attractions at the Royal Air Force Museum include 80 aircraft on display, an interactive area, a simulator ride and 'Our Finest Hour', a multi-media account of the Battle of Britain. In the interactive Aeronauts Gallery visitors can take a pilot aptitude test to discover whether they are the 'right stuff'. 'Milestones of Flight', a permanent exhibition in the museum's silver barrel-vaulted, stainless steel clad building, includes some of the most important RAF aircraft along with classics from the USA, Germany, Japan and France.
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Founder Sir Henry Wellcome, a pioneering 19th-century pharmacist and entrepreneur, amassed a vast and idiosyncratic collection of implements and curios relating to the medical trade, now displayed in this swanky little new museum. In addition to these fascinating and often grisly items -delicate ivory carvings of pregnant women, used guillotine blades, Napoleon's toothbrush -the Wellcome Collection houses several serious (and sometimes disturbing) works of modern art, most of them on display in a smaller room to one side of the main chamber of curiosities. The Wellcome Collection's temporary exhibitions are usually wonderfully interesting, and in the past have tackled such subjects as sleep and dreaming, and the relationship between madness and art.
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The world's largest maritime museum contains a huge store of creatively organised maritime art, cartography, models and regalia. Ground-level galleries include Explorers, which covers great sea expeditions back to medieval times, and Maritime London, which concentrates on the city as a port and currently contains Nelson's uniform, complete with fatal bullet-hole; it will move to the new Sammy Ofer Wing on completion in 2013.
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South-east London's premier free family attraction, the Horniman was once the home of tea trader Frederick J Horniman, it's an eccentric-looking art nouveau building (check out the clocktower, which starts as a circle and ends as a square), with a main entrance that gives out on to extensive gardens.
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Housed inside the former Stock Offices of the Bank of England, this engaging and surprisingly lively museum explores the history of the national bank. As well as ancient coins and original artwork for British banknotes, the museum offers a rare chance to lift nearly 30lbs of gold bar (you reach into a secure box, closely monitored by CCTV). One exhibit looks at the life of Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows and a long-term employee of the bank. Child-friendly temporary exhibitions take place in the museum lobby.
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Housed in a set of 18th-century almshouses, the Geffrye Museum offers a vivid physical history of the English interior. Displaying original furniture, paintings, textiles and decorative arts, the museum recreates a sequence of typical middle-class living rooms from 1600 to the present. It's an oddly interesting way to take in domestic history, with any number of intriguing details to catch your eye - from a bell jar of stuffed birds to a particular decorative flourish on a chair. There's an airy restaurant overlooking the lovely gardens, which include a walled plot for herbs and a chronological series in different historical styles.
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Housed in a 19th-century warehouse (itself a Grade I-listed building), this huge museum explores the complex history of London's docklands and the river over two millennia. Displays spreading over three storeys take you from the arrival of the Romans all the way to the docks' 1980s closure and the area's subsequent redevelopment.
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Home to one of the world's finest collections of children's toys, dolls' houses, games and costumes, the Museum of Childhood shines brighter than ever after extensive refurbishment, which has given it an impressive entrance. Part of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the museum has been amassing childhood-related objects since 1872 and continues to do so, with Incredibles figures complementing bonkers 1970s puppets, Barbie Dolls and Victorian praxinoscopes. The museum has lots of hands-on stuff for kids dotted about the many cases of historic artefacts. Regular exhibitions are held upstairs, while the café in the centre of the main hall helps to revive flagging grown-ups.
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More entertaining than its modern exterior suggests, this museum dedicated to the history of the British Army kicks off with 'Redcoats', a gallery that starts at Agincourt in 1415 and ends with the American War of Independence. Upstairs, 'The Road to Waterloo' marches through 20 years of struggle against the French, featuring 70,000 model soldiers. Also on display is the kit of Olympic medal winner Dame Kelly Holmes (an ex-army athlete), while Major Michael 'Bronco' Lane, conqueror of Everest, has donated his frostbitten fingertips.
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Both a research institution and a fabulous museum, the NHM opened in Alfred Waterhouse's purpose-built, Romanesque palazzo on the Cromwell Road in 1881. Now joined by the splendid Darwin Centre extension, the original building still looks quite magnificent. The pale blue and terracotta façade just about prepares you for the natural wonders within.
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Only marginally less popular with kids than its natural historical neighbour, the Science Museum is a celebration of the wonders of technology in the service of our daily lives. On the ground floor, the shop - selling wacky toys - is part of the 'Energy Hall', which introduces the museum's collections with impressive 18th-century steam engines. In 'Exploring Space', rocket science and the lunar landings are illustrated by dramatically lit mock-ups and models, before the museum gears up for its core collection in 'Making the Modern World'. Introduced by Puffing Billy, the world's oldest steam locomotive (built in 1815), the gallery also contains Stephenson's Rocket. Also here are the Apollo 10 command module, classic cars and an absorbing collection of everyday technological marvels from 1750 to the present.
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The V&A is one of the world's most magnificent museums, its foundation stone laid on this site by Queen Victoria in her last official public engagement in 1899. It is a superb showcase for applied arts from around the world, appreciably calmer than its tearaway cousins on the other side of Exhibition Road. Some 150 grand galleries on seven floors contain countless pieces of furniture, ceramics, sculpture, paintings, posters, jewellery, metalwork, glass, textiles and dress, spanning several centuries. Items are grouped by theme, origin or age, but any attempt to comprehend the whole collection in a single visit is doomed. For advice, tap the patient staff, who field a formidable combination of leaflets, floorplans, general knowledge and polite concern.
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